Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)
It is a fascinating thing to watch someone’s history of protest and addiction collide and conspire to hold a pharmaceutical company accountable and expose its parent family as reprehensible. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles the renowned photographer and activist Nan Goldin and her fight through the AIDS and opioid crisis, but this is bigger than a biographical documentary. Through slideshows, interviews, and family videos, Poitras weaves a riveting, heartbreaking interconnected story of generational pain, its influence over the blurry boundaries between life and art. – Jake K-s.
Where to Stream: VOD
Close (Lukas Dhont)
Dhont’s sophomore feature offers no narrative or stylistic fireworks, but it captures feelings so fine and true they...
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)
It is a fascinating thing to watch someone’s history of protest and addiction collide and conspire to hold a pharmaceutical company accountable and expose its parent family as reprehensible. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles the renowned photographer and activist Nan Goldin and her fight through the AIDS and opioid crisis, but this is bigger than a biographical documentary. Through slideshows, interviews, and family videos, Poitras weaves a riveting, heartbreaking interconnected story of generational pain, its influence over the blurry boundaries between life and art. – Jake K-s.
Where to Stream: VOD
Close (Lukas Dhont)
Dhont’s sophomore feature offers no narrative or stylistic fireworks, but it captures feelings so fine and true they...
- 3/3/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Celebrating its 60th edition this year, the Viennale has marked the occasion by inviting six filmmakers to create trailers for the festival. Featuring work by Claire Denis, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Albert Serra, Narcisa Hirsch, Sergei Loznitsa, and Nina Menkes, the festival notes “their short works differ in tonality as well as emotion, but they all speak of cinema, its history and the world around us.”
Denis’ short pays tribute to the late Michel Subor, while the Oscar-winning Hamaguchi looks to nature and Serra to animals. Hirsch and Menkes deliver beautifully impressionistic shorts, with the former looking into her archives, and Loznitsa captures the convergence of citizens and war in the present day.
Watch below with a hat tip to Mubi and learn more about each shot on the official site.
Le Soldat by Claire Denis
Walden by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Vienna Waltz by Albert Serra
Songs from Naples by Narcisa Hirsch
Independence Day...
Denis’ short pays tribute to the late Michel Subor, while the Oscar-winning Hamaguchi looks to nature and Serra to animals. Hirsch and Menkes deliver beautifully impressionistic shorts, with the former looking into her archives, and Loznitsa captures the convergence of citizens and war in the present day.
Watch below with a hat tip to Mubi and learn more about each shot on the official site.
Le Soldat by Claire Denis
Walden by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Vienna Waltz by Albert Serra
Songs from Naples by Narcisa Hirsch
Independence Day...
- 10/27/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSHong Sang-soo's The Novelist's Film (2022)The competition slate has been announced for this year's Berlinale, featuring the latest by Hong Sang-soo, Claire Denis, Rithy Panh, Phyllis Nagy, Ulrich Seidl, and more. Find the rest of the lineup here. In an interview with Variety, executive Mariette Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian discuss their plans for the festival to be an in-person event. Actor Michel Subor has died at the age of 86. Subor captivated audiences with his performances in films like Jean-Luc Godard's Le petit soldat (1960)—he also was the narrator for François Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1962)—and a number of films by Claire Denis, from Beau travail (1999) and L'intrus (2004) to White Material (2009) and Bastards (2013). We recommend reading Yasmina Price's excellent essay on L'intrus and Subor's distinct historiography as an actor. Recommended VIEWINGThe...
- 1/19/2022
- MUBI
Michel Subor, a French actor who rose to international acclaim for his lead performance in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 feature “Le Petit Soldat” and his narration for François Truffaut’s 1962 romance “Jules et Jim,” died on Monday in a French hospital following a car accident. He was 86 years old.
News of Subor’s death was shared by director Claire Denis on her Instagram and reported by the daily French newspaper Libération. Subor and Denis had collaborated numerous times over the past decades, with their partnership beginning with Subor’s performance in Denis’ 1999 feature “Beau Travail.”
“Michel Subor, the big little soldier is dead,” Denis wrote. Her words have been translated from French. “Our Bruno, the commander.”
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Claire Denis (@clairedenis6)
Born Mischa Subotzki in Paris, France on Feb. 2, 1935, Subor was raised by parents who had immigrated from the Soviet Union a few years earlier.
News of Subor’s death was shared by director Claire Denis on her Instagram and reported by the daily French newspaper Libération. Subor and Denis had collaborated numerous times over the past decades, with their partnership beginning with Subor’s performance in Denis’ 1999 feature “Beau Travail.”
“Michel Subor, the big little soldier is dead,” Denis wrote. Her words have been translated from French. “Our Bruno, the commander.”
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Claire Denis (@clairedenis6)
Born Mischa Subotzki in Paris, France on Feb. 2, 1935, Subor was raised by parents who had immigrated from the Soviet Union a few years earlier.
- 1/18/2022
- by J. Kim Murphy
- Variety Film + TV
One of the most fruitful collaborations in cinema history has been between Claire Denis and Stuart Staples’ band Tindersticks. After working together on a number of films––Nénette et Boni, Trouble Every Day, The Intruder, 35 Shots of Rum, White Material, Bastards, and High Life––their latest team-up comes with Fire.
Led by Juliette Binoche, Vincent Lindon, Mati Diop, Grégoire Colin, Bulle Ogier, Issa Perica, and Binoche’s daughter Hana Magimel, the love-triangle romance is one of 2022’s most-anticipated. As our first real preview, Tindersticks have unveiled the closing song as well as revealing it’ll premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 12.
Titled Both Sides of the Blade, it’s part of their new greatest-hits collection Past imperfect : the best of tindersticks ’92 – ‘21, which is set for release on March 25. The music video for this rather beautifully somber track, depicting a woman shaving in front of a mirror,...
Led by Juliette Binoche, Vincent Lindon, Mati Diop, Grégoire Colin, Bulle Ogier, Issa Perica, and Binoche’s daughter Hana Magimel, the love-triangle romance is one of 2022’s most-anticipated. As our first real preview, Tindersticks have unveiled the closing song as well as revealing it’ll premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 12.
Titled Both Sides of the Blade, it’s part of their new greatest-hits collection Past imperfect : the best of tindersticks ’92 – ‘21, which is set for release on March 25. The music video for this rather beautifully somber track, depicting a woman shaving in front of a mirror,...
- 1/18/2022
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
"Your worst enemies are hiding inside..." Metrograph Pictures has debuted a new re-release trailer for an underseen film from Claire Denis' acclaimed repertoire called L'Intrus, which translates to The Intruder. This first premiered at the 2004 Venice & Toronto Film Festivals, then opened in France and America in 2005. The simple synopsis is too simple: An emotionally cold man leaves the safety of his Alpine home to seek a heart transplant and an estranged son. Metrograph reminds this is an adaptation of "an unadaptable essay by philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy" and was a chance for Denis to push her "elliptical style to the extreme and [transform] the logic and laws of narrative." It's shot on Super 35 by cinematographer Agnés Godard, featuring music by Tindersticks. The film stars Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin, Katia Golubeva, and Florence Loiret-Caille. And if you need any more convincing, the film has lots of dogs in it. Take a look. Here's...
- 3/29/2021
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
The opening shot is of Katia Golubeva, playing the unnamed Angel of Death, lighting her cigarette as a disembodied voiceover, which still seems to belong to her, says “Your worst enemies are hiding inside, in the shadow, hiding in your heart.” Claire Denis’s 2004 L’intrus is a film of internal threats. It places the inconsolability of self-alienation and the impossibility of ever escaping yourself into fraught relation with the porous borders of the body and refusals of sociality. One of the signatures of Denis’s cinema is her sensualist fixation on bodies, isolated but also integrated into space, offering them as moving surfaces that themselves tell stories and resist the stories imposed on them. Possibly both intruder and intruded upon, Michel Subor as Louis Trebor is the absent heart of L’intrus, his failing body catalyzing the narrative crisis surrounding his travels for a heart transplant. A crisis that is...
- 3/26/2021
- MUBI
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Bad Trip (Kitao Sakurai)
The Eric Andre persona is best understood by his popular late-night Adult Swim series, succinctly titled The Eric Andre Show. In every episode Andre’s irreverent and self-destructive behavior leads him to trash his set, causing bodily harm, and torturing a slew of celebrities that range from Jimmy Kimmel to the Real Housewives of Atlanta. Andre is the equivalent of a magic mushrooms trip: wildly confusing, incoherent, sometimes causing one to burst at the seams with ecstatic comedic moments. Andre’s energy finds the perfect vessel in Bad Trip, his first starring role with a script he wrote with frequent collaborator and director Kitao Sakurai.
Bad Trip (Kitao Sakurai)
The Eric Andre persona is best understood by his popular late-night Adult Swim series, succinctly titled The Eric Andre Show. In every episode Andre’s irreverent and self-destructive behavior leads him to trash his set, causing bodily harm, and torturing a slew of celebrities that range from Jimmy Kimmel to the Real Housewives of Atlanta. Andre is the equivalent of a magic mushrooms trip: wildly confusing, incoherent, sometimes causing one to burst at the seams with ecstatic comedic moments. Andre’s energy finds the perfect vessel in Bad Trip, his first starring role with a script he wrote with frequent collaborator and director Kitao Sakurai.
- 3/26/2021
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
With Claire Denis recently wrapping her next film, the star-studded Fire, it’s an opportune time to catch up with her greatest––and perhaps most under-seen––work. Exuding a wondrous formal adventurousness to convey an abstract journey, her 2004 feature L’intrus is now being released in Metrograph’s Virtual Cinema starting this Friday and we’re pleased to debut a new trailer for the re-release. The enigmatic story, traversing from the snowy Alps to Korea to Tahiti, follows an old mercenary (Michel Subor) who is in search of both a heart transplant and his long-estranged son (Grégoire Colin).
Speaking to the film’s penetrating visual approach, Denis told Senses of Cinema, “With Agnés [Godard], she asked me if I would object to trying Super 35 and of course I was ready for it. It meant a little bit more money and I knew that the ratio of Super 35 is different, so I...
Speaking to the film’s penetrating visual approach, Denis told Senses of Cinema, “With Agnés [Godard], she asked me if I would object to trying Super 35 and of course I was ready for it. It meant a little bit more money and I knew that the ratio of Super 35 is different, so I...
- 3/23/2021
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
"Careful what you're saying. Backstabbing isn't in the Legion's honor code." Janus Films has revealed a new re-release trailer for an acclaimed French drama titled Beau Travail, one of the early films made by filmmaker Claire Denis. It first premiered in 1999 at both the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals in the fall, then played at the Sundance Film Festival the next year. This film focuses on an ex-Foreign Legion officer as he recalls his once glorious life, leading troops in Djibouti. Criterion explains: "Denis and cinematographer Agnès Godard fold military and masculine codes of honor, colonialism’s legacy, destructive jealousy, and repressed desire into shimmering, hypnotic images that ultimately explode in one of the most startling and unforgettable endings in all of modern cinema." Starring Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, and Grégoire Colin. This 4K digital restoration was supervised by director of photography Agnès Godard and approved by director Claire Denis.
- 8/17/2020
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
“Cinema is truth at 24 frames per second.“ Any self-respecting student of deeper film history (casual or otherwise) has no doubt come upon the above quote credited to Jean-Luc Godard, perhaps multiple times. It’s quick, snappy, and affirming nature makes it awfully hard for authors, critics, and presenters to resist. It’s ironic then, that the qualities of “snappy, quick, and affirming”, are not exactly what Godard himself is known for. It turns out, anyhow, that this film, Le petit soldat, is that quote’s original source. While snapping off photos of the beguiling Veronica Dreyer in her sparse Geneva apartment, French deserter Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor) quips, “Photography is truth. Cinema is truth at 24 frames per second”. As...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 3/8/2020
- Screen Anarchy
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Claire Denis's Bastards (2013) is showing April 14 – May 13, 2019 in the United States.Claire Denis' Bastards has often been referred to as an exploration of power, money, and depravity, or as an allegory for late capitalism. The figure of Edouard Laporte (Michel Subor)—an ironclad businessman whom neither the police nor the law courts seem to have any interest in investigating—stands here as the personification of a corrupt economic system, the ultimate devil onto whom it is easy to project our high-profile tycoons and shady politicians. This may indeed be the soil—the given—in which Bastards is rooted, but it can also cloud our vision as to what the film ultimately unfolds.Blindness is a major theme in Claire Denis's Bastards. Marco (Vincent Lindon), a naval captain, returns to Paris after the suicide of his brother-in-law and the...
- 4/15/2019
- MUBI
Fred Zinnemann’s counter-assassination thriller remains topflight filmmaking, torn from reality and shot through with an unsentimental dose of political realism. Edward Fox’s implacable killer outwits the combined resources of an entire nation as he stalks his prey, and when bad luck forces him to improvise, he racks up more victims on his kill list. Step aside Bond, Bourne and Marvel — the original Jackal is the man to beat.
The Day of the Jackal
Blu-ray
Arrow Video USA
1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 143 min. / Street Date September 25, 2018 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.95
Starring: Edward Fox, Michel Lonsdale, Delphine Seyrig, Cyril Cusack, Eric Porter, Tony Britton, Alan Badel, Michel Auclair, Tony Britton, Maurice Denham, Vernon Dobtcheff, Olga Georges-Picot, Timothy West, Derek Jacobi, Jean Martin, Ronald Pickup, Jean Sorel, Philippe Léotard, Jean Champion, Michel Subor, Howard Vernon.
Cinematography: Jean Tournier
Film Editor: Ralph Kemplen
Second Unit Director: Andrew Marton
Original Music: Georges Delerue
Written...
The Day of the Jackal
Blu-ray
Arrow Video USA
1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 143 min. / Street Date September 25, 2018 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.95
Starring: Edward Fox, Michel Lonsdale, Delphine Seyrig, Cyril Cusack, Eric Porter, Tony Britton, Alan Badel, Michel Auclair, Tony Britton, Maurice Denham, Vernon Dobtcheff, Olga Georges-Picot, Timothy West, Derek Jacobi, Jean Martin, Ronald Pickup, Jean Sorel, Philippe Léotard, Jean Champion, Michel Subor, Howard Vernon.
Cinematography: Jean Tournier
Film Editor: Ralph Kemplen
Second Unit Director: Andrew Marton
Original Music: Georges Delerue
Written...
- 9/18/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Full disclosure: this is not really an interview about Let the Sunshine In. Claire Denis and I met on the day of her new film’s U.S. release, which was, like many cinephiles, on my mind. All the more so because Sunshine has been swimming through parts of the subsoncious since I first saw it nearly seven months back at the New York Film Festival — where I mean to speak with Denis, and finally didn’t on account of her shooting, to our immense fortune, another film: the much-anticipated Robert Pattinson-starrer High Life.
So there many questions about this wondrous, mysterious film had percolated for a long time, and I didn’t get to them — to this interview’s benefit, as I think will soon become clear. Denis is, in her films and both times we’ve spoken, a searching mind, and it’s clear that, a year out from its premiere,...
So there many questions about this wondrous, mysterious film had percolated for a long time, and I didn’t get to them — to this interview’s benefit, as I think will soon become clear. Denis is, in her films and both times we’ve spoken, a searching mind, and it’s clear that, a year out from its premiere,...
- 4/28/2018
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
One of the best international thrillers ever has almost become an obscurity, for reasons unknown – this Blu-ray comes from Australia. Edward Fox’s wily assassin for hire goes up against the combined police and security establishments of three nations as he sets up the killing of a head of state – France’s president Charles de Gaulle. The terrific cast features Michel Lonsdale, Delphine Seyrig and Cyril Cusack; director Fred Zinnemann’s excellent direction reaches a high pitch of tension – even though the outcome is known from the start.
The Day of the Jackal
Region B+A Blu-ray
Shock Entertainment / Universal
1973 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 143 min. / Street Date ? / Available from Amazon UK / Pounds 19.99
Starring: Edward Fox, Michel Lonsdale, Delphine Seyrig, Cyril Cusack, Eric Porter, Tony Britton, Alan Badel, Michel Auclair, Tony Britton, Maurice Denham, Vernon Dobtcheff, Olga Georges-Picot, Timothy West, Derek Jacobi, Jean Martin, Ronald Pickup, Jean Sorel, Philippe Léotard, Jean Champion,...
The Day of the Jackal
Region B+A Blu-ray
Shock Entertainment / Universal
1973 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 143 min. / Street Date ? / Available from Amazon UK / Pounds 19.99
Starring: Edward Fox, Michel Lonsdale, Delphine Seyrig, Cyril Cusack, Eric Porter, Tony Britton, Alan Badel, Michel Auclair, Tony Britton, Maurice Denham, Vernon Dobtcheff, Olga Georges-Picot, Timothy West, Derek Jacobi, Jean Martin, Ronald Pickup, Jean Sorel, Philippe Léotard, Jean Champion,...
- 4/29/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Robert Pattinson: Actor to play E.T. astronaut. Robert Pattinson to star for Claire Denis If all goes as planned, Robert Pattinson will get to star in French screenwriter-director Claire Denis' recently announced – and as yet untitled – English-language sci-fier, penned by Denis and White Teeth author Zadie Smith and her novelist husband Nick Laird, from an original idea by Denis and writing partner Jean-Pol Fargeau. Among Claire Denis' credits are the interracial love story Chocolat (1988), the sociopolitical drama White Material (2009), and the generally well-regarded Billy Budd reboot Beau Travail (1999), winner of the César Award for Best Cinematography (Agnès Godard). Robert Pattinson, for his part, is best known for playing the veggie vampire in the wildly popular Twilight movies costarring Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner. Robert Pattinson, astronaut In Claire Denis' film, Robert Pattinson is slated to play an E.T. astronaut. But what happens to said astronaut? Does...
- 8/27/2015
- by Zac Gille
- Alt Film Guide
With twenty-five years of filmmaking under her belt, French auteur Claire Denis is still at it. Her latest movie is Bastards, a stark look under the bonnet of the upper class, revealing dark possibilities and even bleaker realities. It continues her run of films which look inwardly at cultures and the various factors that make them tick – or break – such as Chocolat or 35 Shots of Rum.
The director was kind enough to share some time with HeyUGuys about Bastards, and the methods and motivations behind making it.
Bastards stars Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni, Julie Bataille, Michel Subor, Lola Créton, Alex Descas and is in cinemas now.
Kathir a Madurai lad goes to Coimbatore with a purpose and very soon flips for the charms of a beautiful Pavithra who is their neighbor. But Pavithra is already in love with her friend Gautham who is ‘not a nice guy’. Kathir who was...
The director was kind enough to share some time with HeyUGuys about Bastards, and the methods and motivations behind making it.
Bastards stars Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni, Julie Bataille, Michel Subor, Lola Créton, Alex Descas and is in cinemas now.
Kathir a Madurai lad goes to Coimbatore with a purpose and very soon flips for the charms of a beautiful Pavithra who is their neighbor. But Pavithra is already in love with her friend Gautham who is ‘not a nice guy’. Kathir who was...
- 2/20/2014
- by Gary Green
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Claire Denis weaves a powerful web of intrigue, vice and menace in this macabre thriller
Claire Denis has created a menacing and atmospheric neo-noir, as headspinning in its way as The Big Sleep. It isn't there to be watched and understood in the conventional sense, but experienced or inhaled. Denis has once again commissioned a pulsing original score by Tindersticks that enhances the disquieting mood. Vincent Lindon, a star in the old school of charismatic French masculinity, plays Marco. He is a sea-captain who returns to France when he hears his sister is in trouble. Her husband has committed suicide, driven to despair by debt repayments to a shadowy businessman (Michel Subor) – and also, apparently, by allowing this man to abuse his teenage daughter (Lola Creton) in lieu of cash. So for revenge, Marco sets out to seduce the man's mistress Raphaelle (Chiara Mastroianni) and mother of his infant son.
Claire Denis has created a menacing and atmospheric neo-noir, as headspinning in its way as The Big Sleep. It isn't there to be watched and understood in the conventional sense, but experienced or inhaled. Denis has once again commissioned a pulsing original score by Tindersticks that enhances the disquieting mood. Vincent Lindon, a star in the old school of charismatic French masculinity, plays Marco. He is a sea-captain who returns to France when he hears his sister is in trouble. Her husband has committed suicide, driven to despair by debt repayments to a shadowy businessman (Michel Subor) – and also, apparently, by allowing this man to abuse his teenage daughter (Lola Creton) in lieu of cash. So for revenge, Marco sets out to seduce the man's mistress Raphaelle (Chiara Mastroianni) and mother of his infant son.
- 2/13/2014
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
In Britain, the term ‘bastard’ is often affectionately implemented into speech amongst friends, as a commonly used term that has lost its sting somewhat, said endearingly, albeit mockingly, at times. However it would seem that in France, the word remains indicative of unpleasantness, and as poisonous as it’s intended, as within Claire Denis’ aptly named Bastards, there are some rather nasty characters to say the least. If this film was a physical object and you ran your finger across it, you’d be left with half an inch of dirt to wipe off, as this is a seedy, grotty and ultimately bleak affair.
Vincent Lindon plays Marco, who returns home to Paris following the suicide of his brother-in-law, to not only provide some comfort to his grieving sister (Julie Bataille), and physiologically damaged niece, Justine (Lola Créton), but to seek revenge also, as he targets the man who they...
Vincent Lindon plays Marco, who returns home to Paris following the suicide of his brother-in-law, to not only provide some comfort to his grieving sister (Julie Bataille), and physiologically damaged niece, Justine (Lola Créton), but to seek revenge also, as he targets the man who they...
- 2/10/2014
- by Stefan Pape
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Claire Denis' Bastards (Les Salaudes) may actually have a decent story, but she has muddled up the narrative to the point it's confusing as all hell. Even once the pieces start to come together, the film comes to a head-scratching conclusion of sex with corncobs and a close-up of a guy stroking his penis. Let's begin with the plot details I gathered after the opening moments and see where we get... It's raining very hard. A man has killed himself. A girl is walking naked in the streets. A man named Marco (Vincent Lindon) works aboard a container ship and receives a phone call with a family emergency and heads home immediately. Upon arrival he moves into an apartment without any furnishings. Here he makes eyes at the woman living downstairs and helps fix the chain on her son's bicycle. Following the film's opening minutes, those were the things I knew.
- 10/25/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Photo © 2013 Wild Bunch - Alcatraz Movies - Arte France Cinema - Pandora Film Produktion.
Bastards [Les salauds] begins, like Garrel's Un été brûlant, at night, with a suicide. An explanation for the gesture will never come, although, through the film's near imperceptible ellipses, it comes close. A film of profoundly somber gloam, of loneliness and anger and even stifled madness, of complicity and solitude, its sadness is almost absolute.
A torrid string connects a cast predominantly made up from Claire Denis' family of actors: Vincent Lindon, Michel Subor, Alex Descas, Grégoire Colin. There are so many of them that they stand out as coming from somewhere before, some shared place, and their figures seem at once human and also something more so, grander, archetypal. (Lola Créton creates a similar effect in a small role with such a brief but so recognizable presence that it both reaches outside the story, as well as expanding something within.
Bastards [Les salauds] begins, like Garrel's Un été brûlant, at night, with a suicide. An explanation for the gesture will never come, although, through the film's near imperceptible ellipses, it comes close. A film of profoundly somber gloam, of loneliness and anger and even stifled madness, of complicity and solitude, its sadness is almost absolute.
A torrid string connects a cast predominantly made up from Claire Denis' family of actors: Vincent Lindon, Michel Subor, Alex Descas, Grégoire Colin. There are so many of them that they stand out as coming from somewhere before, some shared place, and their figures seem at once human and also something more so, grander, archetypal. (Lola Créton creates a similar effect in a small role with such a brief but so recognizable presence that it both reaches outside the story, as well as expanding something within.
- 10/11/2013
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
Sensuous. Challenging, Mysterious. Dark. Maddening. Just a few words that have been used to describe the cinema of Claire Denis. Her work is being illustriously shown in the retrospective ‘Objects of Desire: The Cinema of Claire Denis‘ by Tiff Cinematheque this October.
Grasping for a word to capture her early work, notably Chocolat and I Can’t Sleep, this word would undoubtedly be spellbinding. In Chocolat, Denis’ poised directorial debut, a secondary character notes that the house where most of the proceedings occur has a spell on it, and the same can be said of the film’s bewitched viewers. In this personal and semi-autobiographical work, the film explores themes of colonialism, family relations, and conscious isolation and distance (exhibited in the characters’ relationships to one another, within themselves, and geographically on a much more monumental scale). These themes are oft explored in Denis’ early filmography, and recur in her later White Material.
Grasping for a word to capture her early work, notably Chocolat and I Can’t Sleep, this word would undoubtedly be spellbinding. In Chocolat, Denis’ poised directorial debut, a secondary character notes that the house where most of the proceedings occur has a spell on it, and the same can be said of the film’s bewitched viewers. In this personal and semi-autobiographical work, the film explores themes of colonialism, family relations, and conscious isolation and distance (exhibited in the characters’ relationships to one another, within themselves, and geographically on a much more monumental scale). These themes are oft explored in Denis’ early filmography, and recur in her later White Material.
- 10/11/2013
- by Leora Heilbronn
- IONCINEMA.com
I saw Claire Denis' Bastards (Les Salaudes) in Cannes earlier this year and it has one of my favorite opening paragraphs to a review I've ever written: Claire Denis' The Bastards (Les Salaudes) may actually have a decent story, but she has muddled up the narrative to the point it's confusing as all hell. Even once the pieces start to come together, the film comes to a head-scratching conclusion of sex with corncobs and a close-up of a guy stroking his penis. Today IFC released the first domestic trailer for the film, which they plan on releasing in theaters on October 23 (iTunes on Oct. 25) and in their description they call it a "gripping thriller about money, sex and power" telling the story of "a ship captain returns to Paris to seek vengeance on the man suspected of causing his brother-in-law's suicide." The story seems simple enough, but the...
- 10/9/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Claire Denis douses Bastards in her usual oblique dreaminess, equal parts romantic and malevolent, yet that style can’t fully compensate for a tale that, underneath its gorgeous aesthetic affectations, proves frustratingly undercooked. After the suicide of his brother-in-law, tanker captain Marco (a grave, intense Vincent Lindon) abandons ship and returns home to help sister Sandra (Julie Bataille), who blames her husband’s death on his renowned business partner Laporte (Michel Subor), and whose daughter Justine (Lola Créton) has attempted suicide after what a doctor (Alex Descas) claims has been severe sexual abuse. Working from a screenplay co-written by Jean-Pol Fargeau, Denis establishes her scenario – which also involves Marco striking up a ...
- 10/8/2013
- Village Voice
The 51st New York Film Festival, running September 30th – October 13th, is coming up quickly and the full lineup is well under wraps. As Sound on Sight gets pumped up for the New York hospitality, here are our picks for the most anticipated films of the 51st Nyff, along with their official synopsis and trailer.
Captain Phillips
Paul Greengrass, 2013
USA | 134 minutes
“In April 2009, four Somali teenage pirates in a stolen Taiwanese fishing vessel seized the Maersk Alabama, a cargo ship bound for Mombasa. When the crew resisted, the pirates left with the Captain, Richard Phillips, and tried to make it ashore in the ship’s high speed lifeboat. What followed was a tense stand-off that was closely watched by the entire planet. Paul Greengrass, one of the incontestable masters of reality-based fictional filmmaking, and writer Billy Ray have crafted a film (based on Phillips’ account of the incident) that is...
Captain Phillips
Paul Greengrass, 2013
USA | 134 minutes
“In April 2009, four Somali teenage pirates in a stolen Taiwanese fishing vessel seized the Maersk Alabama, a cargo ship bound for Mombasa. When the crew resisted, the pirates left with the Captain, Richard Phillips, and tried to make it ashore in the ship’s high speed lifeboat. What followed was a tense stand-off that was closely watched by the entire planet. Paul Greengrass, one of the incontestable masters of reality-based fictional filmmaking, and writer Billy Ray have crafted a film (based on Phillips’ account of the incident) that is...
- 9/26/2013
- by Christopher Clemente
- SoundOnSight
Bastards
Written by Claire Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau
Directed by Claire Denis
France/Germany, 2013
Every detail matters in the films of Claire Denis. Her latest, and unquestionably her darkest film yet, Bastards, contains a wealth of information in its first few shots: a man on the verge of what we learn to be a suicide, pacing about his office with the rain crashing down outside; a naked girl, wearing only heels, slowly inching her way down a darkly lit street. We re-visit the latter of these shots later in the film, but under a completely different and disturbing context. Denis is back working in full L’Intrus mode, and while Bastards isn’t nearly as impenetrable as the aforementioned 2004 film, it’s an elliptically charged work that challenges and seduces with its wide gamut of unsettling images and sounds.
Intensely fragmented, the “thriller/revenge” narrative is put in slow-motion by the suicide of Jacques.
Written by Claire Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau
Directed by Claire Denis
France/Germany, 2013
Every detail matters in the films of Claire Denis. Her latest, and unquestionably her darkest film yet, Bastards, contains a wealth of information in its first few shots: a man on the verge of what we learn to be a suicide, pacing about his office with the rain crashing down outside; a naked girl, wearing only heels, slowly inching her way down a darkly lit street. We re-visit the latter of these shots later in the film, but under a completely different and disturbing context. Denis is back working in full L’Intrus mode, and while Bastards isn’t nearly as impenetrable as the aforementioned 2004 film, it’s an elliptically charged work that challenges and seduces with its wide gamut of unsettling images and sounds.
Intensely fragmented, the “thriller/revenge” narrative is put in slow-motion by the suicide of Jacques.
- 9/14/2013
- by Ty Landis
- SoundOnSight
A true whodunit type but of a different vibe, the one film from this years’ Cannes that should have gotten picked up around the same time they inquired about Blue Is the Warmest Color is the one film that had no business being regulated to the Un Certain Regard section. Sundance Selects will proudly feature their label at the front of the reels for the Tiff & Nyff festival screenings for Claire Denis’ Bastards. We imagine a deal was long in the works as the distributor has already affixed an October 25th release date.
Gist: Written by Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau, supertanker captain Marco Silvestri (Vincent Lindon) is called back urgently to Paris. His sister Sandra (Julie Bataille) is desperate – her husband has committed suicide, the family business has gone under, her daughter is spiraling downwards. Sandra holds powerful businessman Edouard Laporte responsible. Marco moves into the building where Laporte has...
Gist: Written by Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau, supertanker captain Marco Silvestri (Vincent Lindon) is called back urgently to Paris. His sister Sandra (Julie Bataille) is desperate – her husband has committed suicide, the family business has gone under, her daughter is spiraling downwards. Sandra holds powerful businessman Edouard Laporte responsible. Marco moves into the building where Laporte has...
- 8/22/2013
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Sundance Selects/IFC Films is acquiring Us rights to Claire Denis’ 'Bastards,' which debuted at Cannes in Un Certain Regard and will play the Toronto and New York film festivals. Written by Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau, the film stars Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni and Michel Subor, and was produced by Alcatraz Films and Wild Bunch. Sundance Selects is planning an October 25th release. Here's the synopsis: Bastards follows Marco Silvestri, a captain on a container-ship who is called urgently back to Paris by his desperate sister Sandra. Sandra’s husband has committed suicide, the family business has gone under, her daughter has gone adrift - and she holds powerful businessman Edouard Laporte responsible. Determined to exact a terrible revenge for the violence done to his family, Marco moves into the building where Laporte’s mistress Raphaelle lives; but he can’t avoid Sandra’s secret manipulations… or the fact...
- 8/22/2013
- by Anne Thompson
- Thompson on Hollywood
Sundance Selects has acquired U.S. rights to Claire Denis’ Bastards, which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in the Certain Regard sidebar and is scheduled to play both the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. The distributor plans to release it Oct. 25. The film, with a screenplay by Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau, stars Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni and Michel Subor, and was produced by Alcatraz Films and Wild Bunch. Linden plays a ship’s captain who is called back to Paris when the husband of his sister, played by Julie Bataille,
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- 8/22/2013
- by Gregg Kilday
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The distributor has acquired Us rights from Wild Bunch to Claire Denis’ Un Certain Regard premiere and has set an Oct 25 release. Separately, FilmBuff and Abramorama are teaming up on Broadway Idiot while The Cinema Guild has picked up Agnes Varda’s five-part autobiographical documentary series.
Bastards will receives its Us premiere at the New York Film Festival next month.
Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau wrote the drama about a ship’s captain pulled into a web of revenge by his sister in Paris. Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni and Michel Subor star. Arianna Bocco brokered the deal with Carlole Baraton.
FilmBuff and Abramorama will release Broadway Idiot, a chronicle of band Green Day’s collaboration with the Great White Way to bring their bestseller American Idiot to the stage, in nationwide theatres and on VoD on Oct 18. An exclusive New York theatrical engagement will kick off the run on Oct 11.The Cinema Guild has picked up digital and non-theatrical...
Bastards will receives its Us premiere at the New York Film Festival next month.
Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau wrote the drama about a ship’s captain pulled into a web of revenge by his sister in Paris. Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni and Michel Subor star. Arianna Bocco brokered the deal with Carlole Baraton.
FilmBuff and Abramorama will release Broadway Idiot, a chronicle of band Green Day’s collaboration with the Great White Way to bring their bestseller American Idiot to the stage, in nationwide theatres and on VoD on Oct 18. An exclusive New York theatrical engagement will kick off the run on Oct 11.The Cinema Guild has picked up digital and non-theatrical...
- 8/22/2013
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
Bastards [Les Salauds] (Claire Denis, France)
Un Certain Regard
Bastards [Les salauds] begins, like Garrel's A Burning Hot Summer, at night, with a suicide. An explanation for the gesture will never come, although, through the film's near imperceptible ellipses, it comes close. A film of profoundly somber gloam, of loneliness and anger and even stifled madness, of complicity and solitude, its sadness is almost absolute.
A torrid string connects a cast predominantly made up from Claire Denis' family of actors: Vincent Lindon, Michel Subor, Alex Descas, Grégoire Colin. There are so many of them that they stand out as coming from somewhere before, some shared place, and their figures seem at once human and also something more so, grander, archetypal. (Lola Créton creates a similar effect in a small role with such a brief but so recognizable presence that it both reaches outside the story, as well as expanding something within.) The string...
Un Certain Regard
Bastards [Les salauds] begins, like Garrel's A Burning Hot Summer, at night, with a suicide. An explanation for the gesture will never come, although, through the film's near imperceptible ellipses, it comes close. A film of profoundly somber gloam, of loneliness and anger and even stifled madness, of complicity and solitude, its sadness is almost absolute.
A torrid string connects a cast predominantly made up from Claire Denis' family of actors: Vincent Lindon, Michel Subor, Alex Descas, Grégoire Colin. There are so many of them that they stand out as coming from somewhere before, some shared place, and their figures seem at once human and also something more so, grander, archetypal. (Lola Créton creates a similar effect in a small role with such a brief but so recognizable presence that it both reaches outside the story, as well as expanding something within.) The string...
- 5/24/2013
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
★★☆☆☆ French director Claire Denis has maintained a wonderful run, from her 1998 debut Chocolat to recent efforts such as 36 Shots of Rum and White Material. Her latest, Bastards (Les Salauds, 2013), shows not in the main competition at Cannes - which, as ever, is woefully short on women - but instead in the Un Certain Regard strand. In retrospect, however, this decision might be just for Bastards, a broken revenge tragedy set in a rainswept France - a misstep, if not a downright stumble. A man commits suicide and his teenage daughter, Justine (Lola Créton), is found wandering the streets with blood running down her thighs.
The recently-deceased gentleman's friend and brother-in-law, Marco (played by Vincent Lindon, who many will remember from 2009's Welcome), is a ship's captain on an oil tanker stationed out in the Middle East. However, on hearing the tragic news, he returns immediately to France to find out...
The recently-deceased gentleman's friend and brother-in-law, Marco (played by Vincent Lindon, who many will remember from 2009's Welcome), is a ship's captain on an oil tanker stationed out in the Middle East. However, on hearing the tragic news, he returns immediately to France to find out...
- 5/24/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Claire Denis' The Bastards (Les Salaudes) may actually have a decent story, but she has muddled up the narrative to the point it's confusing as all hell. Even once the pieces start to come together, the film comes to a head-scratching conclusion of sex with corncobs and a close-up of a guy stroking his penis. Let's begin with the plot details I gathered after the opening moments and see where we get... It's raining very hard. A man has killed himself. A girl is walking naked in the streets. A man named Marco (Vincent Lindon) works aboard a container ship and receives a phone call with a family emergency and heads home immediately. Upon arrival he moves into an apartment without any furnishings. Here he makes eyes at the woman living downstairs and helps fix the chain on her son's bicycle. Following the film's opening minutes, those were the things I knew.
- 5/21/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
A family is in crisis with the patriarch dead, but the murky world Claire Denis creates seems to intrigue rather than deliver
Claire Denis's pictures inhabit the eye of the storm: a hushed, watchful centre; raging passions round the rim. The French writer–director is the maestro of the elliptical edit, the words not said and the threat in the wings. At her best (on Beau Travail, say, or 35 Shots of Rum), Denis is one of the most distinctive and challenging voices in contemporary cinema. At her worst, her excessive control tips into contrivance. Les Salauds (aka The Bastards) is not Denis at her best.
The mood of foreboding is established right away, as 80s electronica squalls on the soundtrack and Lola Creton picks her way, naked, through the dark streets of Paris. The family factory is in crisis, the patriarch is dead and the finger of blame points...
Claire Denis's pictures inhabit the eye of the storm: a hushed, watchful centre; raging passions round the rim. The French writer–director is the maestro of the elliptical edit, the words not said and the threat in the wings. At her best (on Beau Travail, say, or 35 Shots of Rum), Denis is one of the most distinctive and challenging voices in contemporary cinema. At her worst, her excessive control tips into contrivance. Les Salauds (aka The Bastards) is not Denis at her best.
The mood of foreboding is established right away, as 80s electronica squalls on the soundtrack and Lola Creton picks her way, naked, through the dark streets of Paris. The family factory is in crisis, the patriarch is dead and the finger of blame points...
- 5/21/2013
- by Xan Brooks
- The Guardian - Film News
"Le Petit Soldat" opens Friday at the Nuart with a new 35-millimeter print and retranslated subtitles. Set in 1958 and shot in 1960, "Le Petit Soldat" begins the way "Breathless" begins: with a man in a car. But there’s an immediate difference. "Breathless" is relentlessly present-tense, moment-to-moment: car to cop to gun to girl. "Le Petit Soldat," Godard’s fourth feature, doesn’t barrel ahead. It looks back. Even as we see the man in the car (Michel Subor), we hear his voice intone: “For me the time for action has passed. I’ve gotten older. The time for reflection begins.” It’s that moment in Godard’s journey where he’s pondering not only cinema’s long story, but his own. Subor plays a character named Bruno Forestier, a deserter from the French army during the Algerian War – but when Subor/Forestier says, "Photography is truth. And cinema is truth 24 frames a second,...
- 4/25/2013
- by Howard Rodman
- Thompson on Hollywood
At its essence, White Material is an exploded chamber drama. A Haneke-style family unit (complete with a brutally bored son) holed up mentally, emotionally, economically and geographically encounters various interlopers while fighting to preserve a bourgeois sense of "integrity."
Take the anti-psychological scalpelling of time and space of The Intruder and combine it with 35 Shots of Rum' almost classical use of objects, and you getWhite Material, a film that partly reveals itself through the way things pass in and out of characters' hands within the space of a folded chronology. But whereas 35 Shots of Rum limited itself to a handful—two rice cookers, an iPod, a red door—White Material is stuffed with bric-a-brac. There, are, for example, the battery-powered radios, all of which are tuned to the same reggae rebel radio station.
Or Christopher Lambert's gold-plated lighter, which passes from character to character. A distinctively ostentatious symbol of colonial decadence,...
Take the anti-psychological scalpelling of time and space of The Intruder and combine it with 35 Shots of Rum' almost classical use of objects, and you getWhite Material, a film that partly reveals itself through the way things pass in and out of characters' hands within the space of a folded chronology. But whereas 35 Shots of Rum limited itself to a handful—two rice cookers, an iPod, a red door—White Material is stuffed with bric-a-brac. There, are, for example, the battery-powered radios, all of which are tuned to the same reggae rebel radio station.
Or Christopher Lambert's gold-plated lighter, which passes from character to character. A distinctively ostentatious symbol of colonial decadence,...
- 11/21/2010
- MUBI
The IFC Center in New York City recently ran a retrospective of French director Claire Denis’s laudable films—the most expansive retrospective of her work that NYC has ever seen—to commemorate the theatrical release of “White Material” this Friday. On the occasion, we have also decided to look back at some of her most noteworthy features. In a Claire Denis film, skin is always a character. Whether it be the leathery, rugged skin of Michel Subor's aged body in "The Intruder," which Denis examines in leisurely takes, or the way that skin serves as a kind of titillation in the vampiric…...
- 11/19/2010
- The Playlist
Claire Denis (Trouble Everyday, Beau Travail) goes back to the colonial Africa and tells a story of a coffee plantation owned by a white family caught in a civil war. Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert), a matron of the family is perhaps a clueless, arrogant white woman, as she tries to hire fleeing locals to finish coffee harvest, oblivious to total chaos around her. But we are definitely not watching some helpless puzzle piece in an overwrought, meticulously planned Haneke movie. Maria is not quite the white devil. It's her ingrained sense of entitlement that makes her a curio as she refuses to leave and calling other whites undeserving of the beautiful land.
We are firmly in the Denis territory and there are some amazingly blissful sequences- Maria riding a motorcycle on the dirt road, piles of child soldiers all doped up with pills and junk food spread out in the Vial house.
We are firmly in the Denis territory and there are some amazingly blissful sequences- Maria riding a motorcycle on the dirt road, piles of child soldiers all doped up with pills and junk food spread out in the Vial house.
- 11/15/2010
- Screen Anarchy
Isabelle Huppert is superb as a colonial farmer ignoring the mounting tensions around her in Claire Denis's fine return to Africa
From one of the very first shots of Maria Vial, it's clear she is clinging on for dear life. She's played with sinewy determination by Isabelle Huppert, an actress at her formidable best when making her audience sympathise with a morally conflicted character, and at the start of White Material, she hitches a ride on one of those overloaded African taxi vans by hanging on to the ladder at the back, the veins in her arms throbbing, her face set boldly against the onrushing wind.
We discover later that this scene actually comes near the end of the film's narrative. Maria goes into a flashback, one that fills us in on the chaos of the opening which has seen her, in a pink summer dress, crouching in burnt fields,...
From one of the very first shots of Maria Vial, it's clear she is clinging on for dear life. She's played with sinewy determination by Isabelle Huppert, an actress at her formidable best when making her audience sympathise with a morally conflicted character, and at the start of White Material, she hitches a ride on one of those overloaded African taxi vans by hanging on to the ladder at the back, the veins in her arms throbbing, her face set boldly against the onrushing wind.
We discover later that this scene actually comes near the end of the film's narrative. Maria goes into a flashback, one that fills us in on the chaos of the opening which has seen her, in a pink summer dress, crouching in burnt fields,...
- 7/3/2010
- by Jason Solomons
- The Guardian - Film News
Robert here, continuing my series on great contemporary directors. This week I'm thrilled to highlight one of my personal favorites. Claire Denis' films can still be difficult to find. I've been putting off featuring her as a Modern Maestro until her most recent film made its way here to the Midwest. Finally it has and did not disappoint.
Maestro:Claire Denis
Known For: Poetically filmed ponderances on the human condition, connections, and the relationship between France and Africa.
Influences: Alain Resnais, F.W. Murnau, Jacques Rivette, Yasujiro Ozu, Wim Wenders, really it seems like she's learned from the whole of cinematic history.
Masterpieces:Beau Travail and 35 Shots of Rum
Disasters: none
Better than you remember: Trouble Every Day was a bit too negatively received by critics and The Intruder befuddedly received by the public (the few that saw it). Both are better than you'd be lead to believe.
Box Office:...
Maestro:Claire Denis
Known For: Poetically filmed ponderances on the human condition, connections, and the relationship between France and Africa.
Influences: Alain Resnais, F.W. Murnau, Jacques Rivette, Yasujiro Ozu, Wim Wenders, really it seems like she's learned from the whole of cinematic history.
Masterpieces:Beau Travail and 35 Shots of Rum
Disasters: none
Better than you remember: Trouble Every Day was a bit too negatively received by critics and The Intruder befuddedly received by the public (the few that saw it). Both are better than you'd be lead to believe.
Box Office:...
- 2/12/2010
- by Robert
- FilmExperience
VENICE -- The Intruder is a long and pretentious film that appears to be about a cold wealthy man reconsidering his selfish ways before and after a heart transplant. The film's tedious series of unstructured and disconnected sequences do not, however, make this entirely clear. It's a mystery but not one writer-director Clair Denis provides any encouragement to solve.
Filled with characters whose identity is not revealed doing things that appear to lead nowhere, the film will test the patience of audiences everywhere. Michel Subor plays what turns out to be the central character and we see him stare morbidly at a great number of people in various parts of the world and possibly murdering a couple of them. It's hard to say.
He appears to have sons all over the place and assorted women enter and leave his life as he travels from snowscapes to exotic cities and island beaches in search of we know not what.
So unhelpful is the film in providing information required for the barest exposition that it fails to provide the viewer with any chance of enjoyment or even the beginnings of comprehension as to what's going on.
Surrealism is one thing, but The Intruder appears so ill defined and random that it ends up looking simply inept.
Filled with characters whose identity is not revealed doing things that appear to lead nowhere, the film will test the patience of audiences everywhere. Michel Subor plays what turns out to be the central character and we see him stare morbidly at a great number of people in various parts of the world and possibly murdering a couple of them. It's hard to say.
He appears to have sons all over the place and assorted women enter and leave his life as he travels from snowscapes to exotic cities and island beaches in search of we know not what.
So unhelpful is the film in providing information required for the barest exposition that it fails to provide the viewer with any chance of enjoyment or even the beginnings of comprehension as to what's going on.
Surrealism is one thing, but The Intruder appears so ill defined and random that it ends up looking simply inept.
- 9/10/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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